Is it really true that she didn't know she couldn't vote? Wouldn't everyone caught and facing that punishment make that assertion? Aren't people who get a green card told very clearly that they cannot vote? How did she register to vote without being forced to assert that she was a citizen, which she knew was not true? Ah, yes:

While
living in neighboring Dallas County, she registered to vote before the
2012 election, checking a box on the registration form that certified
that she was a United States citizen. After voting in 2012 and 2014, she
moved to Fort Worth’s Tarrant County in 2015, where she registered to
vote again — this time, ticking the box that indicated she was not a
citizen.

When she told the truth, she was not able to register.

When her registration was rejected, she called
elections officials, telling them that she had voted in Dallas. Told
that people who checked the noncitizen box were ineligible to vote, she
reapplied, this time indicating that she was a citizen.

Finally, the authorities took notice and she was prosecuted. It took all those steps for her to trigger a consequence. That is, if she'd just checked the "citizen" box all along, she'd have gotten away with it. (Like so many others?) And we're invited to feel sorry for her because she's facing punishment:

Her punishment may be unprecedented for an offense that often draws a
minimal sentence or probation.... The case resonates in a polarized
political environment where some are convinced that immigrants threaten
to upend the nation’s shared values more than they continue its long
history of accepting and assimilating outsiders. Ms. Ortega’s lawyers
say they believe the severity of the sentence stems from the furor over
immigration and false claims about voter fraud raised by Donald J.
Trump’s nationalistic presidential campaign.....

Ms. Ortega’s lawyers
are casting her as a scapegoat. The case, they say, was manufactured to
prop up Mr. Trump’s baseless voter-fraud claims....

Baseless? If you believe that, you'd have to think that all noncitizens should just be told to go ahead and vote by simply checking the "citizen" box when they register. How is Ortega a scapegoat? She made herself conspicuous. Her only argument is that she'd have gotten away with it if she'd kept a lower profile.

That is how much of the voter fraud happens; especially in CA. Motor Voter was designed by the Dems for voter fraud. If the federal government investigated in California, millions of illegal votes would be discovered. The Dems in CA have no incentive to investigate. Hence the "no evidence" refrain. There is no evidence because there has been no investigation.

Here's video of President Obama encouraging DREAMERS and Illegals to vote... THIS is why she thought she did nothing wrong. http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Obama+encouraging+illegals+to+vote&view=detail&mid=EB6716D0AF9360ABE86FEB6716D0AF9360ABE86F&FORM=VIRE

There have to be tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, people who mistakenly check the citizenship box. And once registered they're encouraged to vote in multiple ways. To pretend there aren't lots of illegal votes cast is to deny logic and experience. Yet many in media, academia and politics solemnly insist the number of illegal votes is zero. Madness!

The articles in the Chicago Tribune are so slanted in favor of illegal immigrants and illegal voting that they are laughable propaganda. On Saturday they had a long weeper about medical school match day and the "chaos" created by Trump's "travel ban". No mention of the fact that it is a 90-day halt while vetting processes are reviewed in six countries, five of which are failed states plus Iran. No mention of the the five countries (Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan). Reference to the number of potential residencies involved (between 100 and 400) without the context of the total number of residencies nationally (apparently 27,100 if their statement that foreign doctors at 3,800 constitute 14% of hospital residencies is accurate. I had to do the math myself). According to their crack news team, as few as 100 doctors from the five failed states plus Iran out of 27,100 create "chaos" in the system. Baloney. This is pure propaganda. You don't know whether to laugh or to cry at their cynicism and stupidity.As to the Texas lady determined to vote, notwithstanding her failure to become a US citizen, she, like the 19th century sheep-stealer, is being hanged not because she stole a sheep, but so that others will not steal sheep. I predict that the incidence of non-citizen voting in Texas will go down.

So basically, in Texas, the reddest of the red states, you have to vote illegally several times, then fuck up on your paperwork and claim that you are voting illegally, then talk to the voter registration folks, tell them you are voting illegally, then register to vote illegally again, and you might be charged with voter fraud.

The media once again makes Trump's points for him, while thinking they are hurting him.

OT: Regarding the Chelsea Expedia thing: they aggressively recruited my husband a couple of years ago; he talked to them and they made him an offer, but they couldn't come near his salary requirements. They begged and pleaded poverty and dug around and made a show of finding more money, but it was laughable given his CV. He accepted another offer elsewhere a few months later for 40% more than what Expedia had offered...and here we are giggling at how they still haven't filled that position despite talking to half the people in that field in Seattle/Bellevue because they refuse to pay what it would require, and yet they manage to find all this money for Chelsea.

Sometimes I wonder about the future of capitalism when such obvious mental defectives are running companies.

However, I feel eight years is unduly harsh. (Is "unduly" ever used with a word besides "harsh"?)

People who commit sexual offenses, or are a part of a killing, can serve less than that.

I understand making an example, but I would rather the example made was a call by Congress for illegal voting investigations. I know: Congress is too weak. Which becomes part of her punishment.

She is now positioned to be a martyr, and middle-of-the-road people will get squeamish at the sentence length. Of course, whether the opinions of those middle-of-the-road people matter is up to the observer.

Three years would've made the point, and -- when the Press makes the argument of excessive punishment -- most people would probably respond "Nah: seems about right." And not sidetrack the entire issue onto one woman's punishment, which I believe will now be the case.

I wonder if a lot of Americans are still romanticizing about the 19th century "open door" immigration policy embodied in the Emma Lazarus poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your tired, your poor..."). It certainly was part of the civics element in teaching American history in grade school when I was a kid. It came without the context of a country trying to fill its center with farms, a rapidly developing industrial sector, no welfare system, and a melting pot (as opposed to multicultural) approach to social integration. You learned about that stuff later, and then they told you in high school that the open door was finally closed in the 1920s. But you were still stuck with the nagging feeling that America should be like the Statue of Liberty poem. I bet every single reporter and editor that works for NYT (and the Chicago Trib) believes that the Emma Lazarus poem is and should be our immigration policy.

Now, now. The good Lord alone knows what went on in this woman's head, but it does not sound as if she was a malicious evil-doer.Eight years for this is overdone by at least a factor of ten; particularly when - as many point out above - there are maybe millions fully compos mentis people being intentionally allowed to vote illegally by the powers that be.

So if an illegal alien -- oops, I meant "undocumented immigrant" -- claims that he "honestly didn't know" that it was illegal to kill his neighbor and rape the dead man's wife, the papers would be okay with that?

Congress should repeal the National Motor Voting Act. It was a Dem scheme to get to this point where blue states could register non-citizens. The Act has no requirement that citizenship be checked. It is insane.

Him: "Here, officer, is the $100 for the fine."Me: "You don't pay me, you pay the court. The instructions are on the back of the citation."Him: "But I just want to pay you. Here, take the money."Me: "Are you offering me $100 to just forget the whole thing and let you go?"Him: "Yes. Is $100 enough?"Me: "It's more than enough. You are under arrest. Step out of the car."Him: "What? You mean I broke the law? I had NO IDEA."

My Grandfather came to the US from Canada around 1900. He worked, paid taxes, voted, and registered for the draft in two world wars. These crimes finally caught up with him, and he became naturalized in 1944. So imagine my shock.

Ms. Ortega said she had voted for Mr. Paxton as well as Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama’s Republican rival in 2012, after being persuaded by the conservative father of her fiancé, Oscar Sherman.

Why does it matter for whom she voted? And does this also mean that her fiance and his father knew she was voting? How about the other employees at the state employment agency where she worked, did she ever discuss voting with them?

The lawyers describe her as "confused". Is that a euphemism for stupid? They don't explain how she was confused into thinking she was a citizen nor do they point any fingers at who might have confused her into thinking a non-citizen could vote.

Great analysis by Althouse, right up to the part where she gets to Trump. Because, in truth, Donald Trump actually HAS made a lot of baseless "voter fraud" allegations. Allegations about raw numbers of fraudulent votes; pulp fiction-type allegations about "dead people" voting in Chicago, etc.; allegations about voters bused to New Hampshire from Massachusetts to vote illegally.

I love the careful takedown of non-citizens voting by Republican election law experts. I don't love the reckless bloviating by Trump on a serious subject.

The real corruption is that our political class already acts like these illegal voters are a voting bloc to whom they try to appeal.

The Dems are egregious, but the GOP tries in their way too (their way being in the manner do a Niceguy trying to woo a girl entranced with a bad boy).

Would love to know if there is a correlation between the number of any particular ethnic group granted citizenship versus the number who have registered to vote. I'll bet you would find a lot of mismatches favoring the second number over the first

Tarrou said...So basically, in Texas, the reddest of the red states, you have to vote illegally several times, then fuck up on your paperwork and claim that you are voting illegally, then talk to the voter registration folks, tell them you are voting illegally, then register to vote illegally again, and you might be charged with voter fraud.

This part of this comment is one of the best things on this page. We always hear liberals claiming that non-citizen voter fraud is nearly nonexistent because every voter in every state has to affirm their citizenship in writing and under oath or a jurat in order to register.

And yes, people like Hans von Spakovsky and John fund have been urging the Justice Department to do more to look for non-citizen voting for a long time.

The media once again makes Trump's points for him, while thinking they are hurting him.

If you're right, the media is making "Trump's points" better than Trump ever did. I would have enjoyed it, if Trump had made this kind of specific point about non-citizen voting. Instead, Trump made his unserious lunatic points about having lost California and New Hampshire on the basis of illegal votes.

It is a given that there are 15-30 million of type 1 lawbreakers in the US.

Actually, the number is a lot lower than that, 11-12 million.

And in this case, she is a green card holder, which means she is here legally and on the path to citizenship (although probably not much longer).

To contend that a significant number (and the numbers Trump is throwing around means that the number of illegals voting is approaching the percentage of the general population that votes) of undocumented immigrants vote just stretches credibility. The last thing an undocumented person wants to do is draw attention to themselves and their status. Registering to vote, and then voting (sometimes multiple times as claimed above) is the definition of putting a target on your back. I can not believe there are that many stupid illegal immigrants.

In Chuckland, the national polling organizations were spot on, only getting the winner wrong. Trump may be 100% right about losing California and/or Vermont to illegal-voter fraud, but he is still a lunatic for saying it.

The lawyers describe her as "confused". Is that a euphemism for stupid?

_________

It doesn’t/shouldn’t matter. I thought I’d just point it out since the majority of Althouse commenters think that the “illegals” are voting Democratic. This is the second case I’ve heard about of someone voting who should not have been (the first one was the guy who voted twice). They both voted Republican.

A voter ID law would solve most of the problem. That's why Democrats are so adamant against it.

Congress should repeal the National Motor Voting Act. It was a Dem scheme to get to this point where blue states could register non-citizens.

I blame all the Democratic Congressmen who refer to illegals as "their constituents." As in, "my constituents fear deportation for the first time in eight years."

She may be stupid, that’s always a possibility. But even the most basic things are mystifying when you are not in the country of your birth or where your parents were born. It’s easy to get confused, even about the most basic things, or the things that we consider most basic.

It's been 31 years since Reagan's amnesty(1986), and most experts say that somewhere around 1-1.5 million people enter the country illegally each year. Yet Freder thinks the total number in place now is 11-12 million. Fascinating.

Darrell said...In Chuckland, the national polling organizations were spot on, only getting the winner wrong. Trump may be 100% right about losing California and/or Vermont to illegal-voter fraud, but he is still a lunatic for saying it.

Don't put words in my mouth. I have explained this before. Much more carefully, than your dipshit cartoon version. Here is what I wrote, months ago:

Steve M., just above, beat me to it.

Althouse, you've got a wonderful point, about the newspaper's commenter.

But in fact, your ridiculing of the polls is uncharacteristically dumb. The national popular vote was approx. Hillary 48% and Trump 46%. The national polls weren't much wrong at all. They just didn't measure -- and didn't claim to measure -- the razor-thin (but electorally-decisive) margins for Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

"The polls were laughably wrong" is an unwarranted takeaway from the 2016 election. And of course, the misperception comes out of the exaggerated electoral-vote margin for Trump. With Trump himself wrongly claiming that he won a "landslide." You seem to have fallen for Trump's hypnotic Twitter account, Althouse.

The 2016 election polls were within the margin of error; they were within a couple of points of calling the national vote (in which Hillary Clinton got the largest percentage), which was all that those polls were designed to do.

No one can make a good case that national polling was way off in 2016. The national polling was sound. The national polling did not pick up the surprising tightness in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, although I feel certain that the candidates' internal polling did, which is why the candidates spent so much time, in Michigan in particular, in those states in the last days of the election.

Again with the "false claim" business - how do they know? It's amazing how the NYT embeds so many questionable judgments and unproven assertions in its reporting. Ditto Trump's "nationalistic" campaign.

So called Chuck demands you ignore polls that showed double digit Hillary Clinton leads a week before the election (that were designed to shape public opinion) and instead focus only on the polls that were meant to save the credibility of the polls themselves.

The magic trick works best if you ignore what's happening in the other hand.

Everyone gets it except for Fredo and Chuck [of course]. Laslo is right [of course] about the sentencing. Revocation of her green card and permanent deportation after a year or less of incarceration should suffice.

The fact is that it is ridiculously easy for anyone to register to vote in most states. Obama implicitly encouraged illegals to vote last year.

Birkel said......So called Chuck demands you ignore polls that showed double digit Hillary Clinton leads a week before the election (that were designed to shape public opinion) and instead focus only on the polls that were meant to save the credibility of the polls themselves.

Which polls? I don't know; you might come up with some odd poll from some odd source. But here is the RCP amalgamation of polling from the last weeks of the election season. There are no double-digit Hillary leads in national polling. The vast bulk of polls showed a race much tighter. And again, mostly within a narrow margin of error, in predicting the final national vote which was 48-46 Clinton.

She broke the law. She got caught. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. She got punished. Just like anyone else who breaks the laws.....including us real citizens who get punished all the time for piddling infractions.

HT said...She may be stupid, that’s always a possibility. But even the most basic things are mystifying when you are not in the country of your birth or where your parents were born. It’s easy to get confused, even about the most basic things, or the things that we consider most basic.

She's 37. Her mother was deported when Ortega was a teenager, so she's likely been in the country for at least a few years before that. She was a government employee for almost 20 years. How long does it take before you get a grasp on whether or not you can check "I'm a citizen" when you're not?

She may have been confused the first time she checked that, but after not checking it and finding out that she couldn't vote if she checked the box saying she wasn't a citizen, and then changing it, she wasn't confused, she was lying.

Every vote cast illegally cancels out the legitimate vote of an American citizen. It's happened before -- Tammany Hall, Chicago, West Virginia in 1960 -- and if it's happening now, it should be investigated and stopped. Period.

Sentence way too harsh. One year enough time for a working poor or lower middle class to lose everything they have. Come out with any savings gone to lawyer fees, no home, car Family, if any financially burdened.

One year enough of a deterrent to most other illegal voters.

Since the sentence is so harsh, it really should be given extreme publicity, especially around election time, so that every person considering voting illegally is aware that, unlike before, consequences are potentially serious.

Ms. Ortega’s lawyers say they believe the severity of the sentence stems from the furor over immigration and false claims about voter fraud raised by Donald J. Trump’s nationalistic presidential campaign.....

It may be related to the false claims by Trump's opponents who insist this didn't happen.

I can only provide anecdotes but there are several hundred of them and they are in California, otherwise knew as little Mexico.

I used to review workers comp claims. I did it for ten years. The claims were about 1/3 Hispanics.

The illegals (I estimated from their description of their education) said they had a second grade education in Mexico. Many, about half, were illiterate in Spanish, let alone English. I knew a guy who was an investigator for SCIF, the state workers comp insurer. He said that he saw a lot of fraud because roofers would employ illegals and provide no safety gear, hence lots of claims.

Loretta Sanchez was first elected to Congress with illegal votes. 345 as I recall.

Hillary won California by 4.8 million votes and lost the rest of the country by 2 million.

My guess is, and there is no way to know without a real investigation, that 2 million illegals voted in California last November.

Honest to God, what sort of stupid point do you want me to argue? A mid-October poll? You said "a week before the election," and I gave you your own chosen WaPo/ABC poll, a week before the election. (I was right.)

I gave you the RCP compilation of dozens of polls. Showing how close the vast majority of polls got, to the end result of Clinton-48 and Trump-46.

I don't fucking care about mid-October; just like I don't fucking care about you.

One place the libtards like Freder and the NeverTrumpers like Chuck find common ground is their little their rendevous at farpoint where they jointly declare there's "NO EVIDENCE!!!" of vote theft or vote fraud of any kind, "NO SIREE, NO EVIDENCE AT ALL!!!". But all we or anyone has to do is just look, county by county, with cross-referencing, to see exactly who it was that voted, where all they voted, and how many times they voted, and it'll all be answered. But, golly gee whiz, guess who it is that opposes even just simply looking to see who voted, where, and how many times? Why it's those self-same libtards and NeverTrumpers. They're totally uninterested in possibly being proven correct. Funny, that.

Nobody gives a fuck about you either. It's incredibly rude to troll the board and turn every single post to your boring anti-Trump diatribe. And you can't even do it intelligently, instead you come off as a whiny 5 year old.

Nobody is ever going to care about what you have to say. That's what happens when you use other people's tolerance to enable your own rudeness.

October 23 versus October 25 is the thin reed on which you rest your whore honor? You are a willful and wanton slut. You get pimped. And you like it. What price do you command or does the GOP get Chuck goodies for free?

ABCNews had Clinton ahead double digits, which you now admit and claim is unimportant, somehow. ABCNews wanted to sway the election in October 23rd. They wanted to suppress Trump voters and energize Hillary voters. That is obvious.

But after that they wanted to preserve credibility. George Stephanopoulos did his part. And Chuck is doing his part for the same cause. Both are whores but one gets paid substantially more to whore. Always stay bought, so called Chuck.

One of my Mexican friends had dual citizenship and he could vote in both countries, but was too lazy and disinterested to vote in either. He did find it useful to use his Mexican driver's license in the US because They can't confiscate a foreign license, so he didn't bother with insurance.

You fool; I never ever suggested that there wasn't any voter fraud. To the contrary; for years on this blog I have referred readers to the work of Hans von Spakovsky, John Fund, Kris Kobach and Professor Bradley Smith. Those are the conservative lawyers and commentators who have been on the election law reform beat for longer than Donald Trump has even thought about it.

You seem to opt for the knee-jerk reaction in which anyone who criticizes Donald Trump, must also be for voter fraud, or against the large slate of Republican election law reforms. And that is so obviously wrong. That is the side I am on; the side of conservative election law reforms. Less early voting. Better voter id. Stricter voter registration. Careful regulation of absentee voting. Fair and frequent review and purging of voter lists.

What I don't like is Donald Trump's careless and reckless way of barging into that topic. Claims of "dead people voting in Chicago," "voters being bussed to New Hampshire," and of an electoral win in California but for "illegal aliens" voting, sets our good arguments back. Those claims from Trump are really "baseless," which was the term that Althouse didn't like.

This woman in Texas who is now facing deportation; she wasn't an "illegal alien." She was a legal resident. Who should never have tried to vote, and who should never have been allowed to vote if we carefully policed voter registration and voter rolls. A guy like Hans von Spakovsky would never have made that mistake. He would have rightly called it "non-citizen" voting, as I have in these comments.

Now some might say that Trump is making simplistic arguments, for simplistic people. That may be true, but it's not for me, and it won't work in legislative hearings or in a courtroom. Where the serious work of election law reform needs to move forward.

This sentence IS heinous! I'm a prosecutor and can tell you that 8 years is a very serious hit. Way more than you would expect to be imposed on a first time offender of even more serious crimes, such as robbery. Voter fraud is real, and it's deliberately overlooked and ignored by media and policy makers, which is maddening. Even so, they gave this woman a cruel sentence and thereby made her a martyr along with furthering the narrative that this focus on (real) voter fraud is driven not by a real crime/problem but by partisan politics and racism. Great.

"The polls were laughably wrong" is an unwarranted takeaway from the 2016 election. And of course, the misperception comes out of the exaggerated electoral-vote margin for Trump. With Trump himself wrongly claiming that he won a "landslide." You seem to have fallen for Trump's hypnotic Twitter account, Althouse."

I think some of it might just be due to laziness and some of it may be due to rubbing shoulders (and minds) with all the conservatives for so many years on this blog. She lives in Madison, but doesn't seem to ineteract much socially with the liberal minded residents of her city.

Hard to know how baseless the numbers are when there appears to be an honor system level of enforcement in play.If we could get highway patrols to stand down, we could eliminate speeding.My go to guy on illegal immigration is https://www.google.com/search?q=california+deleon+immigration&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=kevin+de+leon+identity+theft&tbm=nws&*I get that the sentence length might be counter productive to some degree. But then, look how her lawyer frames it for public discussion. Note how all the "voter suppression!" folks mute their every vote is sacred mantra when the focal point swings in the "wrong" direction.

Birkel, why do the majority of your comments concern themselves with other commenters opinions? I can see doing this occasionally, but you do it obsessively. Why don't you try stating your opinion and then letting others express theirs once in a while, without rebutting or denigrating every last opinion you disagree with. You'll be a better person for it.

"why do the majority of your comments concern themselves with other commenters opinions? I can see doing this occasionally, but you do it obsessively. Why don't you try stating your opinion and then letting others express theirs once in a while, without rebutting or denigrating every last opinion you disagree with. You'll be a better person for it. "

Birkel, it doesn't take telepathy. All one has to do is look at your comments in any given thread. Most of your comments are rebuttals and/or denigration of others opinions. You rearely express your own opinion. Why not take it down a few notches and just let people talk without constantly attacking them? No one else does this to the degree you do, it's excessive. You even do it to conservative commenters when there aren't liberals or moderates around.

Eight years in prison is not the appropriate punishment here. The sentence should have been 1/2 to 1 year followed by revocation of her green card and deportation. It would have sent just as strong message.

Also, this story isn't going to garner her any real sympathy from more than 35% of the country.

"Ms. Ortega’s lawyers say they believe the severity of the sentence stems from the furor over immigration and false claims about voter fraud raised by Donald J. Trump’s nationalistic presidential campaign....."

An astonishingly blinkered argument coming after these "travel ban" decisions, isn't it? Shows how thin is the line between virtue signaling and beclownment.

At this point watching Freder and unknown and Chuck defend illegal voting by lying about it's prevalence is funny. Over the next 4 years enough states will pass voter ID laws to where democrats will not be competitive in presidential, house, or senate totals nationwide.

They will point to statistically impossible voter turnout levels in New York and California and bleat about the popular vote. Have fun with that.

I am in her position (other than the illegal voting) as I am also a permanent resident.

This matter of permanent residents voting is probably not a huge category as they are relatively few and usually it is a temporary condition, but still it serves to show just how lax the controls are.

I have said several times here that I COULD easily have voted in SF because nobody would have followed up on my provisional ballot, though I am probably on the voter rolls anyway since I frequently get jury summons.

If someone were to conduct a proper inquisition re illegal voting by permanent residents in SF I'm sure they would easily find hundreds of cases like hers. But by far the greater problem is illegal aliens voting, and that would be a widespread SoCal/LA thing. Should the rug ever be lifted down there it would be explosive.

BTW, I find it very odd that her immigration attorney, which any permanent resident should have dealt with, did not warn her of all the things she should not do, such as be charged with felonies, miss paying taxes, or vote illegaly.

Achilles said...At this point watching Freder and unknown and Chuck defend illegal voting by lying about it's prevalence is funny. Over the next 4 years enough states will pass voter ID laws to where democrats will not be competitive in presidential, house, or senate totals nationwide.

They will point to statistically impossible voter turnout levels in New York and California and bleat about the popular vote. Have fun with that.

Where, and when, did I ever "defend illegal voting"?

I am saying that election law reform is important; we need to combat illegal voting.

I am saying that Donald Trump is a clumsy if not incompetent advocate for our side of the argument. And that there are many better advocates.

The places where early voting has been resisted and rolled back; and where voter i.d. legislation has been passed; they are the places populated by mainstream Republican state legislatures and governors. Where ALEC has laid out a careful blueprint for legislation and activism. Where Heritage and the Federalist Society have supplied intellectual throw-weight.

I don't think there are 3 million illegal immigrants registered to vote, but if there were, I would not be shocked either. As I wrote here several months back, I am probably registered to vote in two different states given how easy it is to register in both of those states, and I will point out that in both of them, there is no check on whether or not I am even a citizen of the United States- all I had to do is claim to be one, not prove it.

The country really does need to overhaul how it registers people and verifies identity at the polling place. This really should be a bipartisan issue, and the Democrats' resistance to this is pretty good prima facie evidence that they benefit from the status quo.

Chuck,No-one has been a more effective advocate of suppressing illegal voting than Trump. He made it a popular issue like no-one else has. Its no big deal passing ID legislation where you have the people behind you, but its much more difficult to terrify those where the powers that be encourage it. Or to terrify those powers that be.A DOJ with a popular mandate to suppress it could be revolutionary. I doubt a conventional alternative to Trump would have the guts to go there.Thats another reason they rage at him.

I am saying that election law reform is important; we need to combat illegal voting.

I am saying that Donald Trump is a clumsy if not incompetent advocate for our side of the argument. And that there are many better advocates.

Every American who is serious about voter reform has wanted it since Reagan fucked up in 1986. The republican party has been in power several times since then and had a chance to do something. It clearly hasn't.

Now we are getting somewhere. This despite the GOPe in most cases who instead of acting like they actually want to stop illegal voting go and bleat democrat talking points and attack Trump because "stuff." Like you do.

I will take Trump's approach over your "many better advocates." Feel free to substitute Vichy traitors for those last 3 words.

Birkel said...When principled resistance to poor policy and corresponding, predictable, bad results leads to no course correction there will naturally be unprincipled resistance.

The establishment GOP principally fails. This is how you get Trump.

"Principled resistance" IMO was really a red herring. They knew they outcome they wanted and they knew super majorities of Americans want clean elections. The GOPe was a classic fraud tricking people into voting for something they wanted and "failing" to deliver.

Ok kind readers. How many other forms of accounting by declaration exist in business and politics? "It's against the law therefore there must be none." "please document the at the level of court evidence that this happens." As well as the inverse argument. "it's regulated therefore there must be so many occurrences it needs special supervision. Extra credit for more than one example of each." Fyi I've started to use Amazon because I've figured out how to deliver in Australia. Hope our wonderful host is seeing the credit through her referral service link.

buwaya said...Chuck,No-one has been a more effective advocate of suppressing illegal voting than Trump. He made it a popular issue like no-one else has. Its no big deal passing ID legislation where you have the people behind you, but its much more difficult to terrify those where the powers that be encourage it. Or to terrify those powers that be.A DOJ with a popular mandate to suppress it could be revolutionary. I doubt a conventional alternative to Trump would have the guts to go there.Thats another reason they rage at him.

But that's not true at all. We've waged tough fights in Ohio, North Carolina and Texas, with countless hours of tireless work in federal courts. Battling the Obama justice department. Without any help or any involvement on the part of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has a way of making lots of issues "popular," usually by saying something stupid and/or unsupportable that gets lots of press, divides the country and thrills that discrete percentage of voters that make up the Trump base.

Any Republican DoJ was going to be a vast and immediate improvement. And you'll recall that one of my favorite Trump cabinet nominations was Jeff Sessions. Who prosecuted election law cases in Alabama back when Trump was still a Democrat.

I see no reason that we should not have a voter ID card, with a photo. This way there would be less ability to commit fraud at the voting booth/polling place. The excuse that it is haaaard for some people to get an ID for various reasons is ridiculous. There are plenty of ways to get those FEW people IDs with out any costs and with much help.

The small amount of people nationwide who are unable to do what every other person in the Country can do does not mean that we should abandon the measures to make our elections legal and trusted. The fact that we do not trust our elections to be accurate is the cause of much of the animus towards illegals and those who want to use the illegals to cheat the system.

Absentee voting should be only for those very few people who cannot physcially make it to the polls. There needs to be PROOF that you are unable/out of the country/disabled enough to not be able to get there. PROOF. Just mailing in un-vetted and unscreened ballots is a recipe for fraud. Ditto with in general mail in ballots.

Provisional ballots are a joke as well. No one screens them and frankly if you don't care enough to register to vote ahead of time, you shouldn't be voting anyway.

Until the voting rolls are purged of the dead, the duplicates, the illegals.....our elections are a joke. Worse than some third world hell hole like Uganda.

Motor voter registration, as in California, only serves to facilitated illegals voting.

Every illegal vote, duplicate vote has canceled out the vote of a legal and responsible citizen. When you have a majority of the people who feel that their votes don't count, that you have elections that are stolen, that there are people voting who are not allowed to vote....you have a recipe for a revolution. Or has Birkel said..."Unprincipled resistance".

This needs to be fixed and the Democrats need to stop whining and obstructing.

Voter ID from the State or Federal...only. No other ID is acceptable.No motor voter registrationNo mail in ballotsNo provisional ballotsLimited absentee ballotsJail time for violations

It is true, although the easiest question in any poll is if "you want clean elections..."

The harder question is, "Do you favor a requirement that all in-person voters display photo id?" And there, the majorities favoring voter i.d. actually cut across all racial, gender and partisan lines. MAJORITIES of blacks, Democrats, women and all others favor voter i.d. Not supermajorities, to be sure, but the popular support is there and it was there long before Trump.

"As I wrote here several months back, I am probably registered to vote in two different states.." joining Tiffany Trump, Steve Bannon, Mnuchin, and probably another couple of Republicans.

What is so hard to understand?

Your voting residence is within your State of legal residence or domicile. It is the true, fixed address that you consider your permanent home and where you had a physical presence. Your State of legal residence is used for State income tax purposes, and determines eligibility to vote for federal and State elections and qualification for in-state tuition rates.

To claim a new legal residence or domicile, consult your legal counsel or military legal assistance office, as there may be other factors to consider, such as tax implications.

My parents and I were green card holders and we knew we weren't allowed to vote until we became citizens. My wife was green card holder and she also knew shouldn't vote until she became a citizen. This broad's story is full of crap. If she truly didn't understand what she ticked off then she is too stupid to stay here and if she did then she willfully broke the law.

DBQ is right. The country needs a set standard for both state, local and federal elections on who can vote.

I doubt a conventional alternative to Trump would have the guts to go there.Thats another reason they rage at him.

Chuck totally missed the significance of this statement. Lawyers like chuck have been trying to get some sort of courthouse rules passed about illegal voting for years.

Does anyone remember about the "Bully Pulpit?" That's what Trump has. I readily grant that his statements, especially the tweets, are often vague or unfocused but they do make the issue widely known. The left goes batshit crazy every time and that gets the spotlight on the issue, too.

Without the insane hatred of Trump by the left, I don't know if he would be as effective.

I do worry that someone is going to take a shot at him and the incompetentSecret Service will be busy with hookers or something.

I just hope he still has his own security around him.

By the way, that "stolen laptop" caper has all the signs of a Hillary operation.

Answer: Two counts of second degree felony each punishable by 2 to 20 years.

2. Why did prosecutors seek such a harsh punishment?

Answer: They didn't. Jordan [spokesman for DA's office] said the sentence was up to the jury.

“Our prosecutors — one from the attorney general’s office and one from our office — made no punishment recommendation,” Jordan said. “We said, ‘Do what you think is right.’ We didn’t ask specifically for penitentiary time.” "“We offered a plea deal to Ms. Ortega for probation [in August] and she rejected it,” Jordan said.

3. How did the illegal immigrant get a green card?

Answer: Entered in approximately 1980 as an infant. Would have been eligible for Reagan's amnesty if her Mother had applied.

4. Why then was the Mother deported?

Answer: Probably the Mother also received amnesty and a green card but status was revoked after she was convicted of two non-immigration felonies. Not sure on this one.

Birkel said......@ ChuckSo some states waged legal campaigns against the Obama DOJ. Nice. What were the results?

Pretty good, starting with Shelby County v Holder. That was one of Bert Rein's cases. And it set off activity in North Carolina and Texas (two preclearance states) that is not yet resolved on appeal.

Legislatively, we've been doing really well. Look at Wisconsin.

Now that there is a Trump DOJ do you expect different results?

Now that there is a Republican DoJ, of course I expect a different character to all of the federal litigation. But having the DoJ involved didn't mean that the states couldn't win, as in Shelby County. And even without any DoJ involvement (Wisconsin didn't really have to fight the DoJ; there were other plaintiffs), the litigation fights can still be tough.

There are ID fights, and then there are matters of actual election law enforcement. Even CA more or less sort of requires ID. The problem is CA does not attempt to enforce it's own laws. I don't see any standard Republican doing this, not even CA Republicans when they were the executive here. They frightened nobody. Trump does. That's why CA tried to scrub it's records.

Birkel when it comes to election law reform, it doesn't matter in the slightest that it is "Trump's" DoJ.

I think I'd have to confess, that Jeff Sessions would not be AG under President Kasich or President Rubio. But Ted Cruz might be. Or Kris Kobach might be.

And election law reform would be contested in the same way.

What is it, about your peculiar brand of Trumpkin ignorance, makes you not recognize that Republican election law reform battles have been ongoing with political leaders, and in places, that have nothing to do with Trump?

Why is Trump getting credit for a battle in which he's played no part so far? The best thing I am hoping for is that Trump stays out of it altogether. No Tweets, no stupid interview comments, no unscripted ad-lib bullshit in press conferences.

People may be unclear whether or not they are citizens, but checking the non-citizen box and then the citizen box proved she knew what it was. She voted for Republicans, by the way. The Texas Attorney General or somnethinbg wanted to offer here no prison if she would just testify, but the local district attorney wanted to make a name for himself and vetoed that.

The issue is an ID that identifies you as a registered voter and registered to vote in a particular, State, County, District. Anyone can fork over a fake driver's license or a real one for that matter of fact. It doesn't say anything about your eligibility to vote in a designated, pre registered vicinity.

I could take my DL and vote in every county in California (assuming I could get around that fast), thereby multiplying my votes. I could use provisional ballots in those counties where there might be an actual poll worker doing their job. Creating more chaos and multiplying my votes.

We need to have consistent and enforced election rules and a method to identify each person and verify that they are registered to vote.

Didn't register in time. Too effing bad. Work harder at responsibility next time.

You are ignorant or dishonest. Or both. I supported Scott Walker first, then Ted Cruz and settled for Donald Trump. But I recognize the value of winning and only one - ONE - Republican proved a winner. And without that win, which you tried to diminish before and after the election, none of the things you pretend to want would be possible.

You would rather lose in the style you prefer than win in a way you reject. Or more likely, you are a liar and a cad who wants Big Government solutions that diminish freedom and guarantee a bleak future.

And your insistence on defending Democrats at every turn, as mentioned above, appears impulsive. You are a flawed Moby.

Okay, so it is the premise of Drago and Birkel that Trump is the only Republican who could have beaten Hillary in 2016.

It's an assertion, on some very thin evidence and speculation.

I don't agree with it, so don't waste your efforts on me. Just like I cannot recall ever having wasted my time defending a Democrat.

I will always have a hard time imagining -- or taking seriously, to be more precise -- a voter who would have voted for Hillary Clinton or who would have declined to cast a vote in the general election, if the Republican nominee had been Governor Walker or Governor Kasich. You seem to say that the choice was so critical to the nation's future, so desperate and binary that even though Trump was not your first choice, you knew very well that you had to support Trump because Hillary would have been four more years of Obama left-wing malaise. I get it.

So why wouldn't a Kasich v. Clinton choice be just as clear? Who, among Trump supporters, would have preferred to stay home and see Hillary become President 45, if Trump had not won the primary?

So many people -- Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin -- spend so much time attacking other Republicans in order to promote their idea of ideological superiority. As long as that is going on, I don't have the slightest hesitation about trashing Trump on serious issues of merit.

Birkel said......My assertion is that only one Republican proved a winner as a presidential candidate. And you call that thin?

Only one Republican could ever win the Republican primary. That is a tautology.

And in the general, the Republican can either win or lose. Trump won. He won very narrowly, but he won. Over a candidate that I regarded as the worst Democratic nominee since Al Smith in 1928. In circumstances that were historically favorable to ANY Republican.

We have no metric that can tell us whether Trump would have been the ONLY Republican who could have beaten the Democrat.

Naturally, the myth-making is powerful in TrumpLand; thinking that Trump is the man, the only one who could win and the guy who in fact won a historic landslide win. Trump himself believes much of it, and appears genuinely surprised when a reality-based reporter calls him on it:

This sentence IS heinous! I'm a prosecutor and can tell you that 8 years is a very serious hit. Way more than you would expect to be imposed on a first time offender of even more serious crimes, such as robbery...

Robbery is not a more serious crime. Robbery is a serious crime against a person and their property. Voter Fraud is a crime against the United States of America and its voting system. By voting, she stole my vote, or your vote, or someone else's vote. It is one of the most serious crimes you could commit. Based on the facts related, she obviously knew what she was doing. She can sit in jail for the whole 8 years and think about it.

@ Chuck, so called"Only one Republican could ever win the Republican primary. That is a tautology."

You wrote something not tautological and called it a tautology. Both the word 'could' and the word 'ever' make what you wrote wrong as a matter of logic. Do you often use words you don't understand? (I mean beside the words 'lifelong' and 'Republican' which you obviously do not understand.)

I will always have a hard time imagining -- or taking seriously, to be more precise -- a voter who would have voted for Hillary Clinton or who would have declined to cast a vote in the general election, if the Republican nominee had been Governor Walker or Governor Kasich.

Try harder. I could have easily stayed home for Kasich. Lots and lots of Union people would have probably voted Hillary if it had been Governor Walker. Lots of old people would have probably rejected any Republican candidate who messed with their social security or Medicare. And no matter how clever their reform plan had been, it would have been made up in the press to be more shoving granny off the cliff.

Well, sure. Bush v. Gore being one of the handful of the closest elections in American history.

Trump's 2016 election was pretty high on the list of "narrowest" wins. I think I have posted this handy Wikipedia list before. There would be a number of ways to rank the closeness of Presidential elections; on this list they find a "normalized" number representing the size of an electoral victory independent of the absolute numbers of votes, or electoral votes or even the manner of electoral voting which has changed over time.

And on this list, of the 58 American presidential elections, Trump's win was the 46th closest. Anybody looking for a "landslide" would thereby find the 2016 Trump election in the bottom 25%.

Add to the narrowness of the electoral count: Trump having lost the national popular vote, and having won the critical swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a total of less than 100,000 votes... It was a really close election.

As the Weekly Standard reported: "So it's fair to say that the 2016 presidential election was decided by about 77,000 votes out of than 136 million ballots cast. According to the final tallies, Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 percentage points (44,292 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22,748 votes), Michigan by 0.2 points (10,704 votes)."

THEN DON'T EVER AGAIN BOTHER ME ABOUT HOW MUCH I MUST LOVE HILLARY. I HELD MY NOSE AND VOTED FOR TRUMP. YOU, IT SEEMS, WOULD NOT HAVE DONE THE SAME. YOU WOULD NOT HAVE VOTED FOR KASICH, TO AVOID A HILLARY PRESIDENCY. DON'T YOU EVER DARE TO QUESTION MY REPUBLICAN BONA FIDES, WHEN YOU WOULD HAVE COUNTENANCED ANOTHER CLINTON PRESIDENCY IF YOU COULDN'T GET YOUR DONALD.

I don't know. Somebody in our party needs to understand how to do marketing to people like you. But it isn't me.

Of course, he continues to pretend that "Trump's claims about Obama's birth certificate" were Trump's and not Sidney Blumenthal's, and that the doubts have all been resolved - they haven't. Typical of an adolescent (whatever his calendar age) butting into adult conversations.

Oh give me a freaking break. Sidney Blumenthal didn't go on tv making repeated claims about the Obama birth certificate. Sidney Blumenthal didn't promote himself with an offer of $5 million to a charity of the choosing of anyone who produced Obama birth records. Sidney Blumenthal didn't claim that he sent private investigators to Hawaii and that those investigators were discovering "amazing" things. Sidney Blumenthal didn't involve himself so deeply in the fake story that he ended up in extraneous litigation with people like Bill Maher.

The EPA, wrt global warmingRegulation in general as status quo - i.e., no reformH1b either status quo or expandedImmigration reform as mass legalization

Who knows what else. You would likely get a tax reduction, but its not clear that this in itself is of much use. Pushing on a string is a good way to describe it. There would not be a sea change in business confidence we are seeing with Kasich. I have no idea if Trump justifies this, but Kasich would not.Its also clear he was a bought man.

But I didn't bring him up! Somebody else did, trying to deflect blame away from Trump for his shameless Birther phase. And however bad Sid Blumenthal might be, Trump was an incomparably worse, and more shameless Birther.

@ Chuck, so called "Which polls? I don't know; you might come up with some odd poll from some odd source. But here is the RCP amalgamation of polling from the last weeks of the election season. There are no double-digit Hillary leads in national polling. The vast bulk of polls showed a race much tighter. And again, mostly within a narrow margin of error, in predicting the final national vote which was 48-46 Clinton.

Defending the MSM polls, just up thread, despite evidence that they were using them to depress Republican enthusiasm on October 23rd. The MSM was calling a Hillary Clinton 50-38 lead. And you defend them by citing an October 25th poll.

If you weren't such a bought and paid for party whore, I would feel sorry at the abuse you take.

But I didn't bring him up! Somebody else did, trying to deflect blame away from Trump for his shameless Birther phase. And however bad Sid Blumenthal might be, Trump was an incomparably worse, and more shameless Birther.

As I said before...I could see not attacking Blumenthal

I could see ignoring an attack on Blumenthal

There is no way...no fucking way...that any true lifelong Republican would ever defend Blumenthal....even one as enmeshed in hysterical hatred of Trump as you....

And if you were a lifelong Republican and member of the GOP Establishment...your willingness to defend Blumenthal is exactly why Trump exists......

Gahrie said..."But I didn't bring him up! Somebody else did, trying to deflect blame away from Trump for his shameless Birther phase. And however bad Sid Blumenthal might be, Trump was an incomparably worse, and more shameless Birther."As I said before...I could see not attacking Blumenthal I could see ignoring an attack on Blumenthal There is no way...no fucking way...that any true lifelong Republican would ever defend Blumenthal....even one as enmeshed in hysterical hatred of Trump as you....And if you were a lifelong Republican and member of the GOP Establishment...your willingness to defend Blumenthal is exactly why Trump exists......

LOL! What nasty deceptive piece of shit you are.

You quote me, trying somehow to prove that I am a "defender"(?!) of Sid Blumenthal, and in the process of quoting me you leave out the part where I wrote, "Oh give me a fucking break, Gahrie. I didn't 'defend' Sidney Blumenthal. I think he's a distasteful, even evil Clinton functionary."

The "birther" thing is a product of the secrecy that surrounds Obama's life. He had the thinnest resume of any presidential candidate and was defended by the MSM which has fended off any questions about his life.

I think there are many unanswered questions. We may never learn the answers.

First, the "birther" thing began with Hillary oppo research which may well have found that Obama lied on his promotional materials, and maybe even on college/law school applications about being a foreign student.

The birth certificate was not an original.

Nobody seems to have known him in college.

He was made "president" of the Harvard Law Review without ever submitting a paper.

Maybe it was just affirmative action at work, as it was in his Senate and President campaigns.

Nobody knows his grades or how he paid tuition.

Maybe Trump made too much of it but he is nothing like that snake Blumenthal.

You quote me, trying somehow to prove that I am a "defender"(?!) of Sid Blumenthal, and in the process of quoting me you leave out the part where I wrote, "Oh give me a fucking break, Gahrie. I didn't 'defend' Sidney Blumenthal. I think he's a distasteful, even evil Clinton functionary."

Because you didn't say that in the original post....you said it after I called you on your shit.

It is astonishing to me, the depth and the breadth, of willful gullibility on the Trump Birther narrative.

Because so many of you have demonstrated such a basic level of ignorance, I am going to dumb it down for you in a way I might normally reserve for children or the very aged.

1. I am a Republican. I actively supported, and voted for every Republican presidential nominee since 1988. Michigan allows me to vote a straight Republican Party ticket (a vote for every Republican on the partisan portion of the general election ballot), and that is what I have done for about the last two decades. I have never once cast a vote of any kind for anyone named Clinton or Obama, and I never recommended that anyone did. I am a sometime-volunteer for the Republican Party and a member of the Federalist Society. I am more Republican than 99% of anyone you could find on this comments page, I expect.

2. I did not say anything nice about Sidney Blumenthal on this blog, ever. I never raised the subject of Sidney Blumenthal. Others have, in an effort to defend Donald Trump's birther history in the way that he tried to himself; that is, to blame "Hillary" and suggesting (wrongly) that she started the Birther issue. With the clear understanding that Hillary Clinton has never uttered a word about Barack Obama's place of birth other than to say that it is NOT an issue, Trump and Trump supporters have turned to the vague and disputed story that Sidney Blumenthal tried to steer members of the press onto the Birther story.

3. My one and only position with respect to Sidney Blumenthal is not to "defend" him in any way; but rather to point out that Donald Trump's recorded history with the Birther issue is a hundred times greater than anything that anyone can credibly allege with respect to Blumenthal. I don't personally know anything about Blumenthal's history with Birtherism. I do know for a fact that Trump's history is worse, based on the dozens of YouTube videos, and compilations of videos, in which Trump is raving maniacally about it. The lies about sending investigators to Hawaii; the lies about what those investigators were finding; the lies about what he would be producing in the future; the lies about Obama's own position on the matter. Etc., etc. And then the Trump shamelessness. The shameless Trump stepback from any contention that Obama was not born in the USA. The shameless ignorance that he had once claimed that Obama's mother had not been in the hospital where she gave birth. The shameless claim that many people used announcements in the Honolulu newspapers to "fake" the location of births.

I'm not suggesting that Hillary and Sid Blumenthal didn't start Birtherism in order to "defend" either one. I'm suggesting it because the people who have looked into it closely know more, and better, than you or I.

You really don't understand this concept of "defending," do you? Anyone who trafficks in Birtherism is, in my book, a pariah and an idiot. If Hillary did (there is virtually no evidence), I condemn her. If Sid Blumenthal did (there is scant evidence), I condemn him. Insofar as Trump did (and there are dozens of video and audio recordings of Trump doing just that), I condemn him. Trump stands alone (well, maybe alongside nutjob conspiracy theorist Orly Taitz and ex-sheriff Joe Arpaio) in his promotion of Birtherism. On objective, clear, obvious, provable grounds; Trump stands alone as Birther Extraordinaire.

Instead, Rosa Maria Ortega’s attorney — who was not representing her in August — said he worked with the Texas attorney general’s office in recent weeks to arrange a dismissal of the case.

"The deal, which would have helped ensure that Ortega remained in the country, would have included Ortega testifying before the Legislature about issues with the voting process, said her attorney, Clark Birdsall."

"The attorney general’s office, which was jointly prosecuting the case with the Tarrant County district attorney’s office, approved the dismissal deal, Birdsall said. But shortly before the case went to trial last week, he said, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson rejected it — a statement her office disputes."

IOW, it looks to me like she's a victim of the people who want to "prove" that "vote fraud doesn't happen", and therefore we don't need laws to deal with it, like photo ID laws, cleaning out the voter rolls, requiring real proof of US Citizenship.